The female and male experience create unique lenses with which to interpret and navigate the world and human experience. They just do. When a significant amount of same-gendered people invent, create, and theorize, the possibilities for the whole of the society become incredibly limited. The possibilities guiding the future and design of everything from gadgets, appliances, transportation, medical advancements, financial investments, homes, buildings and communities are substantially limited when a whole gender is nearly eliminated from the table of innovation.
We've got to get earnest about attracting more females to these fields. Our futures depend on it.
As a college freshman, one way to get extra credit in Art History was to visit the Minneapolis Institute of Art and/or the Walker Art Museum and write a reflective composition of the experience. It was April of 1991, and I set off to the the Twin Cities to visit the museums.
I'd hatched a plan to stay in the dorms on the University of Minnesota campus with my cousin, an engineering student at the University of Minnesota. She invited me to attend classes with her for a day and I was thrilled to do so. My cousin was a brain...and she worked hard at it. She'd tape herself reading her science notes before a test and then use the tape to help quiz herself prior to the exam. She was serious about her education. But she was also a ton of fun and easy to laugh and a completely normal - not some socially awkward, grade-based lunatic unable to get along with normal humans in the real world. That said, I knew that attending class with her would be completely different than the courses I took college that were more focused on communication and feelings.
There was no doubt her electrical engineering classes would be drastically different than my Literature and Psychology classes, but what blew my mind (beyond the long formulas on the chalkboards) was the blatant discrepancy in gender equity in the lecture halls. Rooms holding close to 100 people per class, were overwhelmingly male. It astounded me. I'm talking maybe 3 females in a class of 100 people. I had never witnessed such an imbalance in gender in an situation that was not designed according to gender. It was bizarre. I had assumed her classes would be half full of other young women like my cousin - gals who enjoyed a good grapple with an insane mathematical mystery - and half full of dudes. I was wrong. Where were the other women?
That was 1991. Today things haven't changed much with only 6.7 of every 100 STEM graduates being female.
Why aren't girls venturing down STEM paths? Are there really that many more boys who are better at STEM related content than girls? I don't think so. My 7th grade daughter would strongly disagree.
The gender lens in the STEM paths matters. The gender lens in any industry matters. And corporations, ideas, innovations, inventions, medical advancements and the future of humanity will all be stronger when the brains behind design, medical breakthroughs, city planning, and environmental engineering include those of both men and women.
We've simply got to get more females at the table - in every sector - and particularly in the STEM sector. I can't help but think that if STEM graduate numbers were equally male and female, our future as humanity would be exponentially more advanced, a hell of a lot more functional and quite frankly better.
